


of pasture and of eyes

by pseudocitrus



Series: dawn disrupts me [3]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul:re
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Mild Dysphoria, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 05:39:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4907533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudocitrus/pseuds/pseudocitrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Urie has trouble putting things into words sometimes; he's really more of a painter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of pasture and of eyes

**Author's Note:**

> full steam ahead on the mutsurie train, chuu chuuu
> 
> an important note: most paint is toxic on your skin i think, pls take care in real life ok ;; also, hope you’re having a good day!

Sometimes Urie leaves without him.

Groceries, training, running, whatever. Whenever he can’t catch him, Mutsuki spends the time at home training or doing chores, trying not to brood over what Urie must have been thinking.

It seems to Mutsuki that if they are — doing — what they are doing — then Urie should at least think about him, a little bit.

 _What is he thinking_?

Then again, it’s — probably not a big deal, right?

He probably just — maybe, sometimes — he doesn’t really think about Mutsuki, at all.

One day, Mutsuki catches him just as he is sitting down in the entryway. Mutsuki tries to conceal his panting as he asks.

“You can come,” Urie answers, “but I’m going to make a stop.”

“Oh?” Mutsuki asks. He takes a long, shallow breath. “Where?”

Urie laces his shoes and turns down the volume on his headphones before answering.

“I need new brushes.”

:::

It’s clear that Urie has frequented this particular art store before, because the attendants don’t bother talking to him after the first “Welcome” and resume their duties as Urie strides to the proper aisle. He sets the groceries on the ground and picks up one brush after another, staring, as Mutsuki watches.

Mutsuki has no idea about art supplies; he can’t imagine the things that are going through Urie’s mind now. What is he considering — what is he imagining?

It’s…kind of neat, to see him looking at something with such intensity.

It’s neat, but maybe also a unwelcome, on Urie’s part, to have someone staring so closely. Mutsuki circles the small shop out of curiosity and then comes back to Urie’s side, only to find that he has half a dozen brushes in hand and still seems to be considering more. If Mutsuki knew it would take this long, he would have suggested getting groceries afterward.

“Saiko’s ice cream is going to melt,” Mutsuki points out finally, quietly, and Urie huffs.

“I can just take everything back myself,” Mutsuki offers, but Urie snatches up the grocery bag before Mutsuki can take it.

Urie pays. On the way home, Mutsuki clears his throat.

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” he asks. “Painting, I mean.

“Unless you don’t want to,” Mutsuki says quickly, when Urie’s eyes narrow.

He doesn’t say anything until they are at the Chateau’s door.

“It’s not something that requires words.”

“What? Oh — you mean painting?”

He gives him an unamused look as if to say, _Of course._

“Would you ever show me something you painted?” Mutsuki asks as they start putting away the groceries. Urie pauses. Just as he opens his mouth to answer, there’s a happy yell from upstairs.

“Mucchan! Ice cream?”

“We got it!” Mutsuki calls back.

Saiko cheers. “Yaay! Will you bring it up?”

“Get it yourself,” Urie answers.

“Aww. Come onnn, I’m in the middle of a big fight! Mucchan!”

Urie glares.

“I-I’ll put it in the freezer for you,” Mutsuki shouts, and Saiko sighs loudly and, not unexpectedly, doesn’t do anything about it.

“Maybe later,” Urie answers, and Mutsuki’s mind whirls as he tries to remember what the question was.

“Oh! Right. Sure.” Painting. “Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

:::

Urie is not, as it turns out, that comfortable with anything.

“I really don’t need to see any of them,” Mutsuki says as Urie digs out one canvas after another and puts them away without showing him. Urie just frowns and keeps searching.

“What about that one?“ Mutsuki asks, pointing at one with a big dark splatter on it, and Urie takes it and turns it around so it faces the wall.

“I need to paint over it.”

“You’re going to erase it?” Mutsuki is shocked. “How sad.”

“It’s not. It’s finished. That’s what you do.”

Mutsuki shifts his weight on the bed and as he does, the new brushes roll towards him. Idly, he picks them up and examines them. Some have what he can only describe as a quintessential brush shape. Others are flat. One is tiny.

“These are really soft,” Mutsuki says in surprise, swiping the hair of one back and forth across his knuckles. “I didn’t know they felt like this.”

“That’s because you’ve only seen paintbrushes that weren’t cared for properly,” Urie tells him. He is making his way around propped-up canvases; he curses as he knocks over a holder filled with tubes of paint, scattering them everywhere.

“Oh! Do you need help?”

“No.”

Mutsuki sits on the bed again, careful not to land on any brushes.

“So they’ll stay this soft as long as you treat them well?” he asks. He brushes his own cheek, with the largest of the new brushes. It feels softer than any makeup brushes ever did. He does it for a while before he realizes Urie is staring at him, and Mutsuki clears his throat and sets all the brushes back down.

“Sorry. Um, anyway. I didn’t want to bother you, if you were thinking about something else. It’s not a big deal, about your paintings. If you can’t find one, I mean. I was just…curious.”

Urie blinks at him, slow.

“Well,” Mutsuki replies, “I don’t know. I don’t know about painting and I thought it might be…I don’t know. I just…wanted to know more.”

“About painting?”

”Yeah,” he coughs. “About...painting.”

He continues, quickly. “Maybe, if you’re not busy, you can just show me a little bit of how you do it.”

Urie looks back and forth across the scattered, filled-up canvases.

“I can get a sheet of printer paper from downstairs,” Mutsuki offers.

“Or not,” Mutsuki coughs, when Urie gives him a withering look.

Mutsuki has picked up a brush again, unconsciously, and is flicking the hairs briskly across his palm. Urie stares, and Mutsuki stops.

“Sorry. Um. They’re just so soft.”

“Don’t apologize,” Urie tells him.

He pauses, in thought. And then slowly reaches for a palette.

:::

He explains, and Mutsuki stiffens and swallows and stands as Urie unfolds a large cloth splattered with color and shakes it out. It’s just meant to catch stray splashes, and it billows, onto Urie’s bed. Mutsuki doesn’t move. Urie glances over.

“No?” he asks.

“No,” Mutsuki says quickly. “I mean, yes. Yes.”

He inverts his sweater over his head, and then unbuttons his shirt.

“This…this too?” he asks, indicating his binder, and Urie shrugs. Mutsuki nibbles his lip, and then reaches behind his back.

He hasn’t gotten _this_ undressed with Urie before. His heart is speeding up, a little. But Urie isn’t even watching; he’s selecting paint tubes from the floor, and squeezing their contents onto a palette pinched expertly in his other hand. By the time he turns around, Mutsuki is lying on the bed, on the spare cloth, in his boxers. Stiffly. Feeling incredibly awkward.

Urie kneels on top of him, legs on either side of his waist. He looks down at Mutsuki’s body, examining, _staring_ , and Mutsuki’s arms jerk, just a little. He fists his hands, trying to stop from covering himself up.

“W-what are you thinking,” he asks in a voice that comes out as a whisper.

“That you have a good color,” Urie answers.

He fishes a brush out from beneath the cloth — a flat one. Without looking away from him, Urie begins to swirl the brush around. When the brush lifts, its hairs are coated with emerald.

He drops the brush onto Mutsuki’s sternum, and it’s cold. Mutsuki flinches and sits up a little on his elbows, and Urie waits, until Mutsuki says, “I-it’s okay.”

Then he continues. He whisks the color down along the bumps of his breastbone, makes a gradient that fades evenly between his breasts, and then begins mixing on the palette again, this time with a different brush, the largest one that Mutsuki was playing with before. This time, it’s viridian — stroked onto his left breast, worked up in spirals to the tip of it.

Even with paint, the brushes are soft. They tickle; they caress. And Urie is using one brush after another: the flat bristles of one, making a thick broad smear all down the length of his belly — the thick tip of one, dipping into his navel — the soft point of the smallest, circling and dabbing one nipple, and then the other, until they stand and gleam with jade and lime. Mutsuki trembles and tries and fails to strangle back a noise as Urie makes a streak all the way from throat to chin.

 _It doesn’t require words_. Instead of syllables, Urie gazes, and converts every thought into a color, softly. The inside of Mutsuki’s elbows — the furrows of one wrist — the bump of every rib — the curve where his chest connects to this quivering belly. Mutsuki shivers and makes himself watch as he is colored, one layer after another, until even his goosebumps are smoothed down beneath the hues.

Still, even though he is looking straight at him, Urie’s eyes seem just a little glassy. Like he is focusing elsewhere. Mutsuki swallows up against the brush. It’s — just a little — strange. He never imagined that he would ever feel something like _I want you to see me._

At some indistinguishable point, Urie straightens, sets his brush down, and doesn’t pick it up again. Mutsuki starts to sit up, and then stops and hovers awkwardly as his stomach rolls and threatens to smudge Urie’s hard work.

“It’s really pretty,” Mutsuki says, looking down at himself.

“Ah,” Mutsuki says quickly, “I mean, it’s really beautiful.”

“I’m not done,” Urie says, and Mutsuki quickly lies still again.

There is, in fact, one last brush left unused — a medium-sized one — a “quintessential brush tip” one. Mutsuki waits for Urie to press the brush against the palette, and instead Urie sets the palette down and tugs down the hem of Mutsuki’s boxers, working them all the way down to his thighs.

Mutsuki’s pulse speeds as the brush lowers.

One stroke, two, three — across his mound, across the seam between his lips. Mutsuki’s stomach flips — he glances to read Urie’s expression, only to see Urie is looking directly at him, and, now, pressing just a little more firmly.

It’s — really — _nice_ — and Mutsuki sucks in a breath and shudders as Urie uses his free hand to spread Mutsuki’s lips apart, exposing his clit. The brush lowers again, and this time Mutsuki can’t help a gasp.

Gently, gently, gently. Barely any contact, and yet just enough to make Mutsuki’s breath falter further. The brushstrokes lengthen, dipping down a little lower, _gently, gently, gently_ — and somehow, now, it is slick. Urie’s rhythm isn’t increasing, it’s remaining steady, but somehow, now, Mutsuki’s whole body is beginning to throb more and more relentlessly.

His hands grip the sheet.

“U — Urie-kun,” he stammers, breathlessly. “If you don’t — then the paint —”

It’s already smearing off onto the sheet from his wrist.

“It’s fine,” Urie mutters, and to prove it, he reaches up and rests a hand squarely on Mutsuki’s right breast. He squeezes, and paint squeezes up, too, between his fingers; his thumb streaks a couple quick circles around his nipple and Mutsuki’s back arches.

“Ah — _ahh_ —”

It’s hard, then, to care about the paint. Urie kisses the skin above Mutsuki’s navel, coating his own cheeks in seafoam green; Mutsuki grabs him and drags him up so their mouths meet, and Urie’s shirt is soon swathed and splotched, carelessly. Several brushes clatter to the floor, including the one without color, and Urie replaces it with his own fingers. He keeps Mutsuki’s clit in the furrow between the two longest and this is just the right amount of pressure, _just the right amount,_ Mutsuki wraps his arms around Urie tight, and even tighter.

There aren’t words — just Mutsuki’s growing inability to kiss back properly. The roll of his hips. A jagged gasp — and the harsh splatter of paint across the walls.

:::

When the haze fades, their hair is clotted. The corner of Mutsuki’s mouth tastes sharp and bitter. And Urie’s clothes are ruined now, probably, too ruined for him to care about the fact that they are lying against each other.

Their breathing turns even, and slow. At some point, Mutsuki works his paint-stained hand out from beneath Urie and holds it up, wriggling his fingers and scattering dried flakes.

“Your painting got ruined,” Mutsuki whispers.

“It wasn’t,” Urie responds. “It’s what I was imagining.”

Mutsuki can’t help a laugh. “ _Really_?

“I mean,” he says quickly, “sorry. I mean. I guess it’s art.”

Urie snorts, and rolls over, onto his back.

“I hope you learned what you wanted,” he says quietly.

Mutsuki blinks. His mind whirls as he tries to remember what Urie is talking about. He looks over, mouth open mid-apology, only to see Urie hastily looking away and rubbing his cheek.

Mutsuki’s mouth closes.

And then opens again.

“Thanks,” he says, brightly. “I think I did.”


End file.
